[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="320"] Will equity have a place in the UN Climate Talks in Poland? Photo copyright Extinction Rebellion.[/caption]

The Fourth National Climate Assessment, which was made public on Nov. 23, paints a grim picture of an United States that is already bearing the social and economic brunt of a warming world. Coming as it did, just weeks after a new UN report warning of that catastrophic effects of climate change are likely to hit much sooner than thought unless governments take extraordinary collective action, and just eight days ahead of the latest round of global climate negotiations in Katowice, Poland, how exactly is this report going to affect the talks. Terra Verde host and Earth Island Journal [1] editor Maureen Nandini Mitra discusses this as well as what environmental groups are expecting from the negotiations, which begin on Sunday, with Tom Athanasiou, director of the activist think tank EcoEquity [2] and author of the upcoming book Everybody Knows: Climate Emergency in the New Age of Inequality, and Jesse Bragg, media director of Corporate Accountability [3], which works to implement good governance policies at the UN Climate Treaty and monitors the activities of the fossil fuel industry.

[1] http://www.earthisland.org/journal/

[2] http://www.ecoequity.org

[3] https://www.corporateaccountability.org